


Wherever You Are

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Yondu's dead, but he's coming back, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-30 05:45:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10870329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: Galaxy's saved. Captain's dead. Kraglin ain't doing so good.A canon-compliant Kragdu-centric fix it fic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which Kraglin misses his captain.**

His eyes open and he's alone. And for a moment, he's convinced that everything's alright in the galaxy.

Jobs take priority, you see. Sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, sometimes longer. It’s a cold hard truth of Ravager life, one of those unspoken but universally-adhered-to rules that every pirate keeps logged in their mental guidebook. When you get assigned to a Long Distance you roll your eyes and you scoff, and you cuss out the cap’n good-naturedly as you gobble your grits in the canteen. Heck, maybe you use it as an excuse to beg extra grog rations. But at the end of the day, you beat your chest in that age-old Ravager salute, you fuel up your M-ship, and you do your stars damned duty.

There are no exceptions to this rule. First mate, bo’sun, gunner; everyone from the oldest salt to the greenest rookie. If your skills fit the specs, that assignation is gonna wind up in your inbox. If rank doesn't make you immune, neither does boffing your captain on a semi-regular basis. Hell, even cap'n himself has to earn bread and butter every once in awhile; show his boys that he ain't gone soft. Yondu fulfils those duties with a wily grin. He walks out wearing it, and brings it back stained with the blood of the armies he's mowed down.

So all in all, rolling over to a cold patch of bed ain't _new_. The realization that there ain't no more Long Distances, there ain't no more Ravager flagships, and there ain't no more captain? That ain't new either. Still hurts just as much as it did the first night, like a needle's puncturing each lung in slow motion.

Kraglin traces the shape of Yondu's implant, where it sits on the storage box he's using as a bedside table. He dredges up memory after memory: all those sharp, barbed little reminders that Yondu's not off assassinating fatcats and robbing bank-frigates on the far side of the galaxy. He’s gone. He's dead, he’s burned, and he’s dedicated to the stars. For the first time since Kraglin's met him, Yondu ain't coming back.

Kraglin twists the cold sheet until it bites his fingers. “Fuck you,” he tells the universe at large. Then, to the arrow in his fist, the one he'd spent an hour failing to whistle through his skull before flopping onto his bunk to sleep away the frustration: “And fuck you too, boss. Stars dammit, you didn't even say goodbye.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t the sight of Yondu's body that hurt most. That had been a nightmare in itself: iced over, frost gathered in the creases of his jacket, eyes crystallized into blank red jewels. The lids were solid with burst capillaries. Kraglin had been shaking so hard as he tried to close them that he accidentally pressed _down_ with more force than intended and... _Crunch_.

His lashes had been too wet to see through – from the dust and the glare of the explosion, obviously. By the time he'd wiped them, Peter had hauled Yondu away. When Kraglin next saw his captain, as he was tucking trinkets and candles in reverent circles around his corpse, there was a conveniently-placed fabric strip hiding the damage.

But as traumatizing as that had been, it's not his captain's dead eyes that haunt Kraglin through the ass-end of the night cycle. It's that awful instant when he realized Yondu was dying.

He'd heard it before his mind processed the feed from the holodisplay: two men locked together, afloat in space's endless chasm, one hanging limp while the other screamed. All Kraglin could hear, over Drax's elated “Quill!”, Gamora's hunt for more aerial rigs and forcefield generators, and Rocket's quiet “Groot, look away,” was the lag of Yondu's vital signs. Vital signs whose beep had accompanied him every time he sat in the shuttle's cockpit, as familiar as his own pulse.

That had swelled to deafening. Blood pounded the insides of Kraglin's skull, trying to drown out the slowing _plips_ as Yondu's heartbeat fell out of sync, guttered, slowed, stopped completely...

Kraglin punches the mattress. Then the wall, when the give of the springs proves unsatisfying.

“Owfuck!” Bad idea. He hugs his hand to his chest. His knuckles throb, tendons bulging as his fingers flex and furl. As he lays there, air heaving too fast and too shallow into his lungs, he can't help but notice the glitterdust speckling his pillow. Damn stuff's everywhere. They can't get rid of it, no matter how many times they open the vents and vacuum. It gets caught in the crevices of Groot's bark and the insulator-piping around the doors, and every time Rocket scratches, a cloud puffs up.

In a way, it's good to know that cap'n's capable of being a pain in their asses, even after death. But that ain't what Kraglin wants to be thinking about right now. He screws his face up and wraps his arms around it. His fist is a fireball, hot as if he's grabbed a fuel rod. Glitter scratches his skin, and he chases sleep in the hopes it'll be dreamless.

 

* * *

 

Each time he opens his eyes, there's this snatch of bliss wherein he's convinced that captain's here, captain's nearby, captain's lounging somewhere just out of reach... Each time, that snatch gets shorter. Like he's getting used to this new Yonduless order of life. Like he's _forgetting him._ Kraglin can't have that.

He savors those moments instead. Looks forwards to them, in fact: longing for the seconds where he's convinced Yondu's _there_ , out of sight but close enough to stroke if Kraglin only stretches. They're what gets him through the day and put him to bed at night. And as awareness floods around the frayed edges of his consciousness, he ekes those moments out as long as he can before submitting to the smear of artificial light over the backs of his eyelids, and dragging himself up to face the day.

 

* * *

 

“You got glitter on you,” says Peter at breakfast. That's become a buzzphrase. Unlike the rest of the Guardians, Kraglin doesn't start frantically brushing off his shoulderpads. He heads for the empty chair between Mantis and Rocket, headfin dangling between loose-knitted fingers. It rests on his lap while he lifts spoon to mouth, then to bowl, then to mouth again. Peter watches him, shifting from asscheek to asscheek. He pushes over the grits pot so Kraglin can help himself to seconds the moment his cutlery scrapes pewter.

He's worried. But there's so much to do: a baby tree to be watered, a fritzed jump drive to fix, jobs to source and units to make. Peter doesn't have time to console Kraglin, let alone grieve.

The other Guardians are equally useless. They've absorbed Kraglin into their ranks, but he ain't one of them, not yet. They don't know him. They see him slumped over his placemat, arrow on the table and headfin on his lap, and they assume he's exhausted from training, not from crying himself to sleep like a stars-damned child. Hell, they probably ain't even twigged that Yondu and Kraglin were more than workmates. Kraglin can't hold it against them. Ain't like he and the boss ever made a song and dance about their relationship. And both of 'em strayed plenty of times. Those were the rules. You could wander as far and fuck as many sentient lifeforms-slash-sexbots as you liked, so long as you always came back again (and swung by the doctors for a triannual STD check). Now Yondu's gone, those rules seem kinda pointless. Everything does, if Kraglin's honest – from the food in his bowl to the light of the stars.

He eats until he's full, then stands with a creak of kneejoints and a screech from his shoved-back stool.

“There's glitter on you,” Peter reminds him, hand hovering an inch from his shoulder.

Kraglin nods. He picks up his arrow and his crest, and walks away.

 

* * *

 

Life continues. That's the worst thing.

The only person in this star-forsaken galaxy he gives more than two shits about – a lot more than that actually; a veritable sewage tank's worth – is dead. And nobody cares.

Okay, that's bitterness talking. Stakar and the rest had showed up and filled the void with fireworks in memory of the captain they'd shunned. But a fat lot of good that does Yondu. _He_ was the one who needed to hear Stakar's pardon, not those he'd left behind.

Kraglin walks the tunnels with fin in hand, and whenever he goes through a doorway, he makes space for an absent man besides him. He dedicates himself to training. He's always whistling nowadays, whether or not there's an arrow in the holster on his waist. The shrill noise precedes him down the corridors – never any tunes, just long monotonous notes. Kraglin practises holding them until the pitch quavers and slips away, until his lungs burn and tears sting his eyes. He strokes the crudely-welded spokes of the fin, carrying it more than he wears it. He avoids Peter and Rocket, who mourn in their own private ways, throwing themselves into Groot's upkeep and the dismantling and reassembly of every door relay on the ship (most of which, Kraglin suspects, is to keep Rocket's hands busy, not because they're a fire risk like he claims). He wanders the ship at midnight when sleep eludes him, and he lets glitterdust build on his skin and clothes until Gamora peels off his outer layer by force and gives him the choice between tossing the greasy leathers into the laundry bin or the incinerator, and Peter drags him to one side and quietly but sincerely implores him to shower.

All in all, it's obvious to anyone paying attention that he's drifting apart at the seams. Not falling. Not breaking. Just... drifting.

The ship clanks along its scheduled nightly course. The jump drive's out after Rocket's overtaxed it (as well as the integrity of his, Groot's, Yondu's and Kraglin's organs). After Kraglin wakes for the third time, and the arrow shorts an inch from his jugular for the fifth, he loses patience. He gathers fin and holster and freshly-washed jacket, and stomps to the nearest airlock.

If cap'n's old weapon won't let him die, Kraglin'll take matters into his own hands.

He stands in that airlock for an hour. Just looking. Through his reflection in the glass, which blinks back at him in pasty disdain, into the abyss that'd claimed his captain and which, at the press of a button, could claim Kraglin too. He knows how depressurization kills a man. He's witnessed enough of those deaths over the years: from mutineers to prisoners, to hostages whose wealthy parents refused to negotiate over ransom. Plus his buddies from the _Eclector,_ who'd been tossed out the gun ports one after the other. And Yondu too, dying in suffocating agony as his blood boiled and his lungs turned inside out in his chest...

Kraglin shudders. His knees smack dirty chrome. Next thing he knows his shoulders are heaving, and he's clutching the arrowhead so tightly that blood drizzles from his fist. Sobs, the biggest and ugliest of his life, crawl the entire length of his esophagus before they burst. Before he knows what he's doing he's scrabbling for the fin, plastering it over his newly-shorn head. He barely waits for the tack of adhesive pads before he's whistling, a harsh slice of sound. The arrow shoots into the air, hovering in front of him point-first. Perspective makes the sharp head grow, until it fills Kraglin's vision.

“Aw, hell no,” someone says. The arrow swerves aside.

It doesn't even puncture the airlock. Just clatters to the ground like its strings have been snipped. When Kraglin, snivelling and shaking, picks it up, he finds the metal warmer than usual, swirls of radiation gathering around it even unactivated. It trembles in his grip, although his whistle has long-since died – so much so that Kraglin's convinced it's not his own shakes being transferred. And, when he shunts it back into its sheathe, moving slow as a man twice his age, it leaves behind a palmful of glitter.

 

* * *

 

After that, everything changes.

It's been a fortnight since the ashes of the galaxy's most despised Ravager Admiral were ejected from the shuttle backburners. Kraglin performs his usual morning rituals: scrubbing sleep-crust and glitter from his eyes, yawning, sticking a hand down his waistband to scratch, and rolling to face his non-existent captain when he farts. That's basic courtesy when you've got a bunkmate, imaginary or otherwise. Even before they started stripping down together, he and Yondu had been running dual jobs and living in close confines long enough for Kraglin to learn that his partner could and would whistle if woken by a false gas alarm. But today, unlike any other day thus far, rather than finding an empty wall, Kraglin reaches out to brush a scarred blue back.

It's solid. Muscle shifts under skin, following the trace of Kraglin's fingers. Yondu, ever the complainer, snorts a little and growls in his sleep.

Kraglin on the other hand? Well, several thoughts are clobbering him at once.

 _Whoops, slept with the fin on_ is one of them, because categorizing the crises from the minutiae has never been a speciality, especially not early in the morning. After that follows _this can't be happening, please let this be happening,_ and _I always did say captain'd drive me crazy one day._ But above all those doubts and all those fears, one thought reigns supreme.

_S'been a long time since I spooned something with a heartbeat._

Kraglin exhales. His relieved sigh is so long and devout that it wracks his skinny body like he's being buffeted by the solar wind. He shuffles closer. If he's after a heartbeat, he's out of luck – Yondu doesn't have one of those. But he's here, and if he ain't _warm_ than he's at least _staticky,_ like someone's attached crocodile clamps to each big toe and rigged him to a current. His usual smell – the smell Kraglin's woken up with his nose pressed to the source of for nearly thirty years, and had planned on doing for thirty more – has been superseded by ozone and nitrates, like the tang of air before a thunderstorm. If he had any bodyhair, it'd be standing on end. Kraglin's certainly is. The itchy prickles agitate where they rub the insides of his jumpsuit.

Yondu still makes the same noise when Kraglin flops an arm over his waist, somewhere between a grumble and a grunt of greeting. Kraglin's smile stretches his cheeks. He's hasn't worn that expression for weeks, but it doesn't take long for his facial muscles to remember. Cap'n could always make him laugh.

He snugs up so his lean chest hides Yondu's back. He's performed an intimate cartography of every one of Yondu's scars, mapping lash marks and brands with his tongue, tasting the tapestry of abuse that knits the blue skin silver. Largest and ugliest is the line that cleaves a valley from Yondu's implant to his tailbone, following the curvature of his spine. It feels as it always does - softer than the surrounding blue hide, smooth as silk. Kraglin rubs his nose against it, nails digging into Yondu's hips as he fights to convince himself this is real.

The implant's been fixed. It's back to its pre-fin shape, a flat wedge of crystal jammed haphazardly into Yondu's skull, as if at some point between being sold by parents, screwed by slavers, and rescued by Stakar someone had set a lump of red yaka-quartz against his head and attempted trepanning with the aid of a mallet. There's not a fizzling coil of circuitry in sight – which only adds to the surreality of the situation. Because the prosthetic is still on Kraglin's head, dragging him sideways against the pillow as he nuzzles Yondu's nape, dotting kiss after kiss where the scar tissue is thickest. Last time he'd seen Yondu without that fin, his old implant had been smoking from a plasma bolt.

Kraglin can't think too hard about that though. If he acknowledges that inconsistency, he runs the risk of dismantling this dream. And dammit, but he _needs_ this. He needs the expansion and contraction of Yondu's back against his chest, the quiet whuffles he makes as he sleeps, the slow curl of his body as it conforms to the shape of Kraglin's...

If this is a fantasy, it's one of his better ones. So Kraglin shunts all doubts to the pile of _things he'll deal with later._

...Along with the thrill that squirms through his guts when he presses his legs to the back of Yondu's and finds them bare. That's unusual. _Eclector_ got mighty gusty, back in the glory days. If there wasn't a draft tickling one part, there was a blast of air from a cooling vent threatening to rip the hairs out of another. Not even cap'n's cabin was exempt. No matter how many blankets Yondu heaped onto his bed, they couldn't substitute the muggy heat of the rainforest he'd been born in. Kraglin, fished out the Hraxian gutter at sixteen with all the hardiness and temperature-resilience that resulted from growing up on the streets, didn't mind letting him steal the covers. So long as he got to curl up behind him like this, pressing his thigh between Yondu's from behind, fingers squirming between layers of grubby leather until they reached skin.

There's no leather in the way today. Yondu's next grumbly noise catches and clicks in the back of his throat, revving like he's swallowed a misfiring engine. He's crushed between Kraglin and the wall. This means he's phased halfway through it, the front of his body glimmering where it pushes into the metal. But if he hasn't noticed, Kraglin ain't gonna point it out.

He bangs his knuckles when he tries to pull him closer. The skin's split from his punching-bout of a few days back, as well as hours spent whistling the arrow between his fingers in tight figure-of-eights, like he's flipping coins at a casino. Kraglin's yelp almost drowns out the whine of his depowering crest, as he criks his head to one side and it dislodges from his scalp. The active implant never quite registers on the audible scale until it's absent. It's a two-toned hum, calibrated to fade to white noise unless you're concentrating. Kraglin's used to listening to it on nights like these, when the only other sound besides their synchronized breathing is the crest, vibrating in its fitting like a battery. It used to lull him to doze, even when sleep was impossible.

As a Hraxian, weaned on scraps and spite in a sunless subterranea, Kraglin ain't never had the most regular slumber-cycle. With the Ravagers, he could catnap whenever he felt his eyes drooping. With the Guardians, who insist on a healthy day-and-night schedule during Groot's formative years, things are harder. Kraglin generally spends his night-shifts tucked in his cot, staring at the wall, trying not to think too hard about where he is and what was sacrificed for him to be here. At least this time, he's not alone.

Or so he thinks, until the thump of pre-caffeine Quill walking into a doorjamb jars him from his drowse, and he realizes that all he holds in his arms is air and glitter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yondu is a very glittery ghost. That was the one bit I liked about the ending - he went out as he would want to go, as a big sparkly rainbow.**
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> **I hope you enjoyed this! I'll try and get the next chapter up ASAP, depending on how many comments/kudos etc this gets.**
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> ****


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which we get the promised ghost!sex.**

By lunchtime – which means the hour of the day-cycle when Groot is sat in a puddle of light and told to photosynthesize quietly while his teammates plot their course over slabs of raw meat (Drax), well-ripened tubers (Gamora), honey-coated insects (Rocket), gooey nutrient bars (Mantis, who's amazed at the novelty of processed food) and something that Peter calls 'cheerios' (least appetizing of the lot; grain circles semi-dissolved in the milk of a low-sentience ruminant) – Kraglin's certain it was a dream. A textured, intimate, gut-wrenchingly _real_ one, but a dream nonetheless. For while his cap'n was a man of many skills, sleeping halfway out of a wall ain't one of them. But insist as his mind might, his body tells a different story. He can still taste ozone, and his palms prickle when he touches conductive surfaces.

And of course, there's the glitter.

He's carrying the crest. His neck ain't the most muscular (Yondu had, on occasion, likened it to such flattering objects as a data-stylus, a stiletto shank, and a garrotting wire). It struggles to hold up the weight of his skull without slouching. Add to this twenty pounds of mechanics and fine-tuned sensors, and Kraglin is due some nasty cramps. But he ain't gonna dump the prosthetic in some storage box to gather cobwebs. Not after this morning.

“Hey Kraglin,” says Peter, trying to spoon cereal into his mouth, chug the glass of fruit-juice Gamora insists he drink twice a day in an effort to stop him dying of scurvy, and talk all at once. “You got glitter on you.”

Kraglin nods, distracted. Yondu's ashes itch at the creases on his palms, and a few stray flecks land in his bowl as he hooks it onto his lap, balanced atop the crest and his knees. He reckons that'll be the end of it. But Peter reaches across the table and snags Kraglin's arm before he can hide that under the table too. “Buddy. Stop a moment. Wash your hands before eating, alright? We gotta set a good example for Groot.”

He's just trying to help. This is how Peter copes. If you won't let him hug you and blast music until you've been _ooga-chaka'd_ into submission, he'll mother like a damn clucking hen. If there's one thing Kraglin hates, it's being treated like a child. Least of all by the boy he had a hand in raising. It actually takes a few seconds for it to percolate that he's being patronized. He reacts, as would any other fine self-respecting Ravager, with a blob of bland nutrient porridge, balanced on the edge of his spoon and trebucheted into Peter's face.

“Fuck off. You don't tell me what to do.”

“Captain,” Peter reminds him, wiping his cheek. Kraglin bares his teeth on instinct, because _how dare_ Peter use that title. Then he recalls that he'd been the one to bestow it on him, and suddenly he can't bear to be in that room a second longer.

“I'mma go eat in the cockpit,” he mutters. He rams the arrow into its holster, stacking the fin and the bowl one atop the other for ease of carrying. “Y'know. Make sure the engines're tickin' over, an' all. I'll catch you idjits later.”

Drax's rumbled commentary follows him: “I do believe someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

Mantis claps and smiles. She even manages to make it look natural, rather than constipated. “Metaphor!”

Kraglin leaves 'em to it. Peter's gaze burns a hole in his collar, but he knows better than to stop him. “Be careful,” he says. Kraglin doesn't dignify that with a response. He slams the door button, making it reel shut behind him with a clunk, and heads for the airlock.

He never makes it. Because as he's walking, juggling bowl and grits and spoon and fin all at once becomes too much effort. As far as final meals go, protein-paste ain't the most appetizing, but Kraglin was brought up hungry, and he refuses to waste rations. He rests the bowl on his bootcap, catching an escaping dribble and sucking on it while he plasters the fin to his head, freeing up his hands.

The mechanical whir begins. Kraglin picks up his bowl, and keeps walking.

As he nears the blastdoor, the arrow strains in its holster like it's trying to drag him to safety. It’s his imagination, Kraglin’s sure. He ain't whistling, and while the arrow might've responded to Yondu's  _heart,_ it has yet to react to anything other than high-pitched noises under Kraglin’s stewardship. Just in case though, he strokes the shaft up and down, fingers lingering around the bauble at the fletching-end.

“S'okay,” he croons. “Ain't no big deal. Going for a lil' walk, thas all. Then we'll see the boss again.”

“You see me now, idjit!”

Kraglin blinks. “What?”

“I'm standin' right in front of ya! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!” It’s that voice again: the one that’d hollered at him first time he tried this. It’s spot-on, not a beat out of cadence or a note out of tone, and hearing it makes every muscle in Kraglin’s body snap to attention, like a dog sitting on command. 

If this is a cosmic joke at his expense, it’s an unfathomably cruel one. He keeps walking.

The voice follows him. “Don't fuckin' do this to me, don't'chu fuckin' dare, you hear me Obfonteri? You hear me right now? _I'm orderin' you to turn your skinny ass around and go finish yer food._ You take one more step towards that airlock, boy, I'll... I'll... Aw hell, I don't know what I'll do! Don't fuckin' try me on this, Obfonteri!”

Kraglin's hands are shaking. “This ain't real,” he whispers. He squeezes his eyes shut, scrambling to remember procedures for this sort of thing while counting to thirty in an effort to calm his racing heart. He rushes through the early numbers, slurring them together in his mind. He has to pinch his nails into the fleshy ball of his thumb until he's calm enough to do this properly. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. “Auditory hallucinations c-can be caused by pr-progressive disorders, drugs, schizophrenia, stress, anxiety, g-grief...”

“Quit recitin' Doc's medical handbook!” A snort. “Fuck knows how ya memorized all that when ya can't read, ya dingbat.” Oh Thanos –  now there’s a staticky field cupping his cheeks, shaped around what might be hands. They're broad and firm and familiar. But Kraglin ain't finished his count yet. He won't open his eyes, not until it's done. Because what if Yondu ain’t there? And what if he is?

Twenty-four. Twenty-five. He takes breath after breath, so deep that his lungs spasm, protesting the strain.

Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. He drums his fingers on the arrow. His other palm hovers an inch from the source of that strange electric energy, as if he's a moment from touching a supermagnet.

Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. No running from this any longer.

Thirty.

Kraglin forces his eyelids open, biting his underlip to still his wobbling chin.

He sees Yondu.

Cap’n’s almost nose to nose with him – or as close as he can get without standing on tiptoes. He looks more frantic than Kraglin's seen him since the time Quill contracted a strain of Xandarian flu, and Yondu put the heist of the year on hold so he could sit by the brat's bedside and hold his flushed little hand. But as Kraglin focuses on Yondu, that worry drains away.

“You see me,” Yondu breathes. “ _Finally._ ”

Now, semi-conscious dreams on the cusp of morning are one thing. Seeing his dead cap'n while marching down a corridor in broad daylight? That's something else entirely. Kraglin wants to count to thirty again, but that would mean closing his eyes, and _that_ would mean looking away from Yondu.

The rays from the supergiant they're orbiting slice through the musty inner-ship atmosphere, refracting through thick portal glass. They also, Kraglin can't help but notice, stream through the man before him, tinting a brilliant blue. If he squints, he can make out the pipes at the corridor's far end, visible through Yondu's belly. It's like he's hewn out of translucent gemstone. A mansize version of one of his trinkets.

Wondering, Kraglin rests a hand on Yondu's shoulder. He exerts pressure – a little more than if he were clapping Yondu on the back, a little less than if he was trying to snap his collarbone. Yondu's form holds for three full seconds. Then his shoulder bursts like a poked bubble. The rest of Yondu follows it, with a noise between a squeak and a snarl – one Kraglin associates with Quill sneaking up behind his cap'n and blowing on his implant.

For the second time in as many minutes, Kraglin's alone. His eyes track the swirls of glitter-dust that stream through the bright white sunbeam. He exhales slowly, shoulders sagging and knees threatening to follow.

Yondu's gone. And Kraglin has to admit, in the way of the pragmatic, that there's a fair chance he was never here to begin with.

...Although if that's the case, why is Yondu reforming at the far end of the corridor?

His blue always stands out against the shadows. Right now that contrast is more extreme than ever, as if the tiny scales composing Yondu's skin have each been imbued with a speck of bioluminescence. Kraglin's jaw drops.

“You ain't wearin' nothing,” he says, because he can't think of anything smarter. Yondu rolls his eyes, once they've regrown.

“No shit. Ain't worked out how to make clothes yet, but... Well. Figured ya wouldn't mind seein' me in all my glory.” And _there's_ that leer, the one Kraglin jerked himself to the memory of the night before last, before curling in his bunk with only a sticky hand, a pounding heart, and a mind more confused and self-loathing than ever to show for it. Yondu slinks closer. He wears his skin with the arrogance of an underwear model. On anyone else of Yondu's height, dimensions, and general grizzled ugliness, it'd be laughable. But that _confidence..._ Kraglin's missed it. Air scratches in his throat.

“Cap'n,” he manages. His arms are lagging in shock, but when they welcome Yondu to him it's with a need that borders desperation. “ _Cap'n._ ”

Yondu chuckles. The purry rumble erupts from deep within his chest. Pressed to him like this Kraglin can _feel_ it through his leathers, just like how he can feel the muscle on Yondu's back and shoulders, the meat of his stocky waist, the perfectly gropable round of his ass...

Yondu makes that noise again. Half-shocked, all-warning. Kraglin jumps back, terrified he's gonna vanish. But Yondu only raises a hand, expression one of intense concentration. He rubs his asscheek ruefully once he's certain it's solid again, wince splitting around his smile.

“Ain't often I say this, Obfonteri,” he says, beckoning Kraglin close. Kraglin obeys, sheepish but eager, willing to say or do anything if he can only hold his captain again. Yondu picks up his hands, returning them to their prior positions, zapping static directly into Kraglin's fingertips. “But for once in my life, I need ya to be gentle with me.”

 

* * *

 

Ravagers have a half-formed and nebulous concept of the afterlife. But while lore varies from ship to ship, evolving in tandem with captain and crew, there are a few common theories. The dead are dust, at one with each other and the stars. They don't look down on those they've left behind. They don't keep watch. And they certainly don't come back and haunt – unless, as whispers on the _Eclector_ claim, you really piss them off.

Kraglin, coiled in the portable bunk he's crammed into the storeroom above the cockpit, where Quill and his crew rarely venture, fully expects his next lurching entry into the waking world to finish in the same manner as the last several. That is: with a slap from reality, a slump of his shoulders, and a renewed determination to impale himself on an arrow as soon as the damn thing will get to within an inch of him without short-circuiting. Instead, he wakes to the weight of the prosthetic holding his head against the pillow while Yondu swallows his cock.

Kraglin groans.

Electricity stipples his bollocks, where Yondu's gathered the sack in a charged palm. The sensation along his shaft is intense bordering ridiculous – like a violet wand is being run up and down its sides. Kraglin's abdomen clenches, and before he knows it the spring in his belly has tightened to the point of explosion...

Not yet. Not fucking yet.

He grabs Yondu by the ears. Then, catching the glint of glitter from where he's pinching too tight, switches to press on the back of Yondu's skull, caressing the implant and the dry cracked skin surrounding it, exploring the staticky buzz of their contact.

Yondu makes a series of grunts that, were Kraglin not holding him with his lips kissing the fattening base of his knot, might have been “Good morning.” His nose is buried in musky hair. If he stays there much longer, Kraglin's gonna swell up inside his mouth and give the guy lockjaw. Somehow, he doubts Yondu'll be any more amenable to that as a ghost.

The lighting is poor, suiting Kraglin's eyes, which have evolved for a lifetime in the smoggy Hraxian underworld. But Yondu's skin still exudes that ghostly glow, glossing Kraglin's pubes electric-blue as cheeks hollow and a blue tongue winds its sloppy way up.

Oh hell. He's looking right at him. That bastard knows _exactly_ what he's doing; he knows _exactly_ how much Kraglin's dreamed of this. His eyes are disproportionately mischievous and fond – guess which dominates – and Kraglin only wishes he had the coordination to drag Yondu up and over him so he could lick his ass and his cock and force him to suffer even a fraction of what Kraglin feels right now...

It takes several strained seconds for Kraglin to quash down his need to fuck the slack clench of Yondu's throat. Once he's back to a less urgent state of arousal, his hands flop to his sides. It's a ritual, of sorts. A performative release of control. And Yondu takes the reins as he always does: with pomp and pride. He swallows around him, measured gulps that rake Kraglin's cock over the textured roof of his mouth and the soft sheathe of his throat, while rolling Kraglin's balls in a lazy massage. He maintains eye contact, until the last moment when Kraglin's hips helplessly jerk and his slippery knot pops into Yondu's mouth, locking for a moment before Yondu strains wide enough to release it.

“Aw fuck,” Kraglin hears through the haze. Once his vision clears he finds Yondu straddling his legs, rubbing a half-dissolved chin. His dentistry is first to reform, silver and yellowed enamel hanging in space until bone, gum, and lip grows around them. Yondu claps a hand over his mouth when he catches Kraglin staring. “Don't watch, dammit. S'weird.”  
It is. Weird, and creepy, and not a little bit nauseating. But it's _captain._ Kraglin wouldn't care if his resurrection had brought him back with tentacles. (Well, he _would,_ but he's sure he'd adapt.)

He sighs, tugging Yondu's shoulders until he relents. He lowers himself onto Kraglin's chest, pillowing the solid side of his face against him. Kraglin strokes the hinge of his mouth, where chin junctures neck, before switching to the tender patch behind Yondu's earring when the reforming jaw starts to crumble. Yondu hisses, tenses, relaxes. He drapes himself across Kraglin without a care for his first mate's need to have sensation in his arms or legs come morning, let alone breathe. It's a good thing his weight barely registers. Heck, Kraglin might actually be able to pick him up without throwing his back or dialling down the gravity!

Now there's a thought. Hoisting Yondu halfway up a wall and having him hook his legs up on Kraglin's shoulders while he feeds in his cock... Call him undersexed or thirsty, but it's been a while since he had an orgasm anywhere near as satisfying as the one whose liquid remnants are soaking the mattress. Yondu's new form provides a world of opportunities, and Kraglin plans on making the most of them.

Which is why it's a damn shame when he reaches over Yondu's back, wriggling thin fingers into the crevice between his buttocks and asking without words whether Yondu'd like Kraglin to return the favor, that he clips the fin on the bedpost. The connection snaps. No pop. Barely even a fizzle. Kraglin wouldn't know he'd lost it, were it not for the sudden but glaring lack of Yondu.

“Dammit.” He fiddles with the adhesive sucker, pulling frustrated faces as it gums his fingers together rather than sticking to his scalp. Rocket's offered to make the fin permanent, but a part of Kraglin rebels against that thought, as if grafting the metal to his skull would concede that Yondu ain't going to need it again. By the time he's got it plastered to his smooth-shaven cranium, Yondu's waiting boredly, still using Kraglin as sofa, feet kicking in the air and arms folded under a newly-solidified chin.

He's still here. Kraglin almost chokes on his relief.

Yondu cracks an eye. Finding him whey-faced and shaking, he sighs like he's doing Kraglin a massive favor and wriggles up his chest to demand a kiss.

If he don't smell of anything but nitrus and dodgy wiring, he don't taste of much either. Kraglin, accustomed to a full-frontal assault of bad breath, booze, and whatever Yondu'd been eating that day every time he licks into his captain's mouth, is disappointed. But while the weight on his ribcage ain't suffocating, even when Yondu braces his forearms against it and rears over him to take charge, it's noticeable enough that Kraglin can't drag in air to complain.

Yondu sucks on his tongue, much as he'd done Kraglin's cock not a minute before. The bitter salt of semen is all Kraglin can pick apart from the crackles of electricity, as spit meets spit and charge snaps between them, and cap'n tilts his head to an angle where he's unlikely to have his eye poked out if Kraglin gets excited and starts bobbing about with his beaky nose.

Yondu's cock brushes Kraglin's knot, still plumped from the orgasm. Seems that part of his body's conductive too. Whether or not the contact was calculated, Yondu snatches the opportunity as soon as it presents itself, and slots his tongue into Kraglin's mouth when he gasps.

It ain't the most finessed kiss Kraglin's ever had the pleasure of receiving. But then again, Centaurians views mouths as weapons – and whether or not Yondu got snogged during his tenure with the Kree, Kraglin neither wants nor dares to ask. Despite the messiness, there's something rewarding about knowing all this; the spitty glide of lips, the fuck of a static-laced tongue past the sharp points of his teeth; is the fruits of his own tutoring. Kraglin savors that satisfaction, like he savors the way Yondu bangs their incisors together in his eagerness, then clicks to himself in frustration before diving back in.

It's sloppy as a teenage frottage session. Only they're not wearing clothes, and if Kraglin's long-peaked forty, Yondu must be teetering around the big five-oh if he ain't already slipped over. But right now he's panting, husking out a moan as he grinds on Kraglin's hip, his crotch, his abdomen, anywhere he can reach. When Kraglin fumbles between them, collecting a handful of cock and electricity, he only gets in a squeeze and a tug, both of them administered as delicately as he can.

Luckily, Yondu's close to his peak. Rough pumps ain't required. He bites his underlip when he cums, and Kraglin finds himself captivated by the way his canines pinch divots the skin. Yondu worries his lip slowly, then releases it moreso, teasing as a stripper. He keeps it bitten until the last possible moment, stretching the blue skin out so Kraglin can see every chap. When it pops loose, kiss-swollen and shimmery with spit, Kraglin's knot _pulses,_ too hot and too heavy, large as a fist when it ain't packed in a tight blue hole.

There's no chance to indulge it. Next moment, the urgency slithers from Yondu's limbs. He liquefies on Kraglin's lap – not literally, although after today's dissolving shenanigans, Kraglin wouldn't be surprised. The quiver of his muscles and the sticky strings that coat Kraglin's fingers and his belly, slicking the hair into clumps, are as familiar as the thud of Yondu's heart.

Kraglin can't feel that anymore. He pulls them to sit, just to check, and presses on Yondu's chest hard enough to make glitter fizzle. Nope. Nothing. How the hell did he get it up if he don't have blood? And -

Kraglin examines his damp handful. It bears an uncanny resemblance to glitter glue. Huh. That's new.

But Yondu's pectoral cusps that balance between brawn and aging softness, just like Kraglin remembers. His skin flickers between matte blue and a more vibrant neon, like the gelatinous umbrella of a jellyfish, as he rubs his softening prick through Kraglin's cupped fingers and his silent chest against his palm. When Kraglin pulls him in for another kiss, their mouths meet with a bolt of lightning, powerful enough to make Kraglin's teeth rattle, as if he's the earth cord to Yondu's blown fuse.

“Whoops,” Yondu mumbles. He doesn't sound sorry. He scoots them horizontal again, bumping his forehead against Kraglin's to dispel the last of the charge. “Go to sleep, wouldya? You got bags under yer eyes that make me wanna stash loot in 'em.”

Kraglin, like any good first mate, excels at doing what he's told.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This is... the honeymoon chapter, shall we say. Leave comments if you liked it?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which Mantis worries, Kraglin scares traders, and Yondu makes memories.**

Kraglin wanders through empty storage holds and rusty battle rigs, head swimming like he's spent the past hour stood on it. The fin bats his thigh every other step. He'd worn it until Yondu got sick of the pained faces he pulled, and outright ordered him to take the damn thing off. But Kraglin knows he's still here: loping besides, invisible and intangible yet undoubtedly real.

He avoids the tunnels that bore towards the shuttle's hull. Don't want no more airlock incidents. And whenever he whistles, it's to send Yondu's arrow darting around them in a perimeter, scaring away nosy Guardians who are trying to keep track of their resident Ravager.

He steers clear of them as much as possible. It ain't fair, not when they're concerned for him. But Kraglin can't go chattering away to thin air when there's other folks around. They might start thinking he's barmy.

 

* * *

 

By the end of the first week, Kraglin's starting to understand the logistics. He can't see Yondu unless he's wearing the fin, and even then it takes effort for the first few seconds, while the connection melds their minds and Yondu consolidates his form to the point where he won't drift apart at a touch. If he pinches Yondu a bit too hard, clasping his bicep or sneakily groping his ass (because Yondu _says_ he can't make his old outfit reappear, but Kraglin's known him long enough to harbor a healthy suspicion, especially when a very nude and very blue captain slings himself yawning onto the table and props his feet on Kraglin's lap while he sits for his one sociable meal of the day) Yondu pops like a blister and has to reform at a distance. And whenever Yondu vanishes and regroups, he leaves behind a delicate smattering of glitter, dusting Kraglin's palms like icing on a fairycake.

Yondu catches Kraglin's lips twitching. He scowls at Kraglin's handful of shimmering particles, which sift through his fingers and dissolve on contact with the floor. “What.”

Kraglin congratulates himself on his pokerface. “Nothin', sir,” he mutters, out the corner of his mouth. The green chick shoots him a curious glance – must have cybernetically enhanced hearing.

Kraglin stuffs his cheeks with today's menu. It's a bushel of dried fungi dug out of deep-storage, made appetizing with the aid of food packets from the last time he and Yondu separated the shuttle from the _Eclector_ and steered her into the gloomy depths of deepspace, in search of some well-needed R&R. That was – what, twenty years ago? Luckily, with the exception of the newly-mortal Peter, they all have hardy enough digestive systems to fend off a bit of e-coli.

Kraglin chews, clearing his throat around the mouthful, and looks anywhere but Yondu.

“Good.” Yondu glares at him a moment longer anyway. “I want no quips about how I'm all sparkly, you hear? If water didn't run right through me, I might actually take a shower.”

Now _that's_ a rare statement. Kraglin snorts, managing to swallow before his root goes down the wrong way. He can't say what he wants to – that the day Yondu willingly bathes is the day he dies. It'd be kinda redundant. And anyway, he doesn't wanna tip Gamora off – not when her head is already cocked in his direction. Best he cut lunch-hour short, and go spend some quality time with his captain in private.

“I'll catch ya later,” he tells Peter, bouncing to his feet.

Peter catches the clothed part of Mantis's arm before she can lay her hand over Kraglin's. Her pretty lil' face is all puckered with worry. “Sure,” he answers, while giving her wrist a warning shake. “And Mantis? Remember, we ask for _permission_ before we read minds.”

“Emotions,” Mantis corrects him, as usual. But while his face is turned in her direction, she's not the one Peter's listening to. His ears follow the tramp of his old first mate's boots as Kraglin slopes out the door, glitter-stained hands jammed in his pockets. And he hears how he pauses on the threshold, as if he's letting someone pass that only he can see.

 

* * *

 

“So?” asks Yondu. “How d'you reckon Peter's doing? Y'know. With the whole Guardians gig.”

As warp jumping is liable to make the shuttle splinter apart mid-transit, they've chugged at regular half-lightspeed to the nearest set of populated moons, and are now haggling for the overpriced, under-engineered tat that the locals call _spare parts._ Kraglin shows the stallowner his teeth. There aren't quite as many as are usually found in an adult mouth, but of those he has remaining, all are silver capped and vicious-sharp. Gulping, the man quits his spiel about how a piece of crooked wiring is a family heirloom passed down from his grandma's grandma, long rest her soul. He knocks a generous three quarters of the price.

Kraglin keeps him on his toes until not even fear – fear of the crest on his head and the arrow in his belt, which are recognized from here to the most far-flung outreaches of this quadrant – can whittle him down further. Then he forks over the unit chits, feigning reluctance, and does his best to ignore Yondu's grouchy kicking at the piles of oil-smeared machinery, which clog this shop like fat in an artery. His feet go right through.

Cap'n's only mad because Kraglin ain't answered him yet. But he's gotta learn to be patient. Like it or not, Kraglin simply can't be at his beck and call every hour of the day anymore. Not unless he wants to get boxed up in a padded white room.

As he counts the change into the lining of his sleeve, pockets the wires, and beats his retreat, he gives Yondu's bare shoulder a stroke. Just in case he thinks he's forgotten him. Can't be nice for him to be ignored. Not after having spent days on end screaming for someone you care about to quit trying to kill themselves, while they couldn't hear a word. (He and Yondu have yet to discuss this part of Kraglin's grieving process. They're men – Ravagers at that! They know better than to broach subjects that run the risk of causing snuffles.) But Yondu – for once – doesn't hold a grudge. He leans into Kraglin's touch, humming under his breath. And then, before Kraglin can be accused of leaving his hand dangling midair and getting in the way of passing shoppers, he presses close to his side – so close that his blue arm merges out of Kraglin's torso. Kraglin blinks at it.

“Uh. Don't that hurt?”

“Don't think much can hurt me anymore,” comes Yondu's breezy reply. “Anyway. Ain't like this is the first time I've been inside ya.”

By then, the milling tradesmen and marketgoers have formed a dense enough throng that Kraglin can get away with smacking Yondu's ass. Glitter puffs. Yondu growls. But unless he wants to go full-poltergeist and fling Kraglin into one of the surrounding stalls, which vend juiced local fruits and sticky rock-candy, populated by as many people as they are by flies, he can't retaliate. Judging by the smirk, Kraglin knows it.

 

* * *

 

Yondu asks again, once they've returned to the ship. Kraglin being Kraglin, and Kraglin having a lifetime's experience in the art of swindling shiny things off merchants for his cap'n, had made short work of his supplies list. As first back, he can hop into the pilot's chair, kick up his feet to rest on the depowered dashboard, and let his cap'n slump over his lap. That's one of those many casual lil' intimacies they'd never allowed themselves aboard the _Eclector,_ which seem so fresh and exciting now. Yondu's question makes the pet of Kraglin's hands over his scarred back stroke to a halt.

“Quill's okay, ain't he Kraglin? Bein' a leader, bein' a cap'n... He don't miss me too much?”

He tries to make it sound like a joke. It doesn't come across that way. Usually, cap'n's better at putting up his barriers, acting as if the mishaps and machinations of the galaxy are one big pantomime for his viewing pleasure. But as Yondu sits, straddling Kraglin but slapping him away when he tries to encourage his hips to swivel, Kraglin can tell this is anything but funny to him.

“Quill's fine,” he says, angling in for a kiss. “Don't miss ya one bit.”

Yondu blocks him, one hand over his mouth. Kraglin's tongue is the switch to his palm's circuit. When Kraglin drags it over his captain's lovelines, he's treated to a buzz of energy, cold and sharp as a licked icicle.

“Yeah? What d'you mean – you mean he didn't...” Yondu trails off. Kraglin ceases his lapping long enough to get a read on his cap'n's expression.

Crap. He's misjudged the situation. By telling Yondu what he thinks he wants to hear, he's managed to make things worse.

“Look.” He rests a hand on each of Yondu's shoulders – not to feel the cut of muscle beneath the skin, but in the closest he can come to a hug without being accused of sentiment, or turning him to glitter again. “He cried, yeah? First coupla days. He fuckin' bawled his eyes out like a pussy lil' bitch.”

That makes Yondu chuckle. Kraglin rolls with it, leaning until their noses bump. “Congratulations, cap'n. You raised the softest damn Terran I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. But y'know what? After that first week? He did what you or I woulda done.” He conveniently neglects to mention how Yondu had gone on a self-destructive rampage of failed jobs and lost contracts after Peter's betrayal, or how Kraglin had been perfectly willing to toss himself into the void if it meant seeing his captain again. “He realized he had a team depending on him, and he decided to do what's best for them. Which is to move on. It's gonna be slow. It's gonna be ugly. But he'll get through it sir, I promise – and he'll become a damn fine captain along the way.” A wry grin. “He's got us to help him, don't he?”

There's relief in the crinkles round Yondu's eyes. Kraglin can't tell whether that relief is because Peter gives a damn about him, or if Yondu's just happy Quill ain't scuppered all his aspirations for the sake of the dead. Probably an amalgamation of the two. In what direction that balance is swayed, Kraglin suspects not even Yondu himself can tell.

“You ain't gonna move on though,” he says, teeth grazing the tattoos that wind up Kraglin's neck. “You ain't gonna forget me.”

Kraglin laughs at the thought. He gathers Yondu in his arms, still amazed that he can hold him like this without being steamrollered, and returns the nuzzle with the addition of a nip. “Don't think I could if I tried, sir.”

“Good boy.” A blue hand rubs around the prosthetic, where a Mohawk used to sit that Kraglin always grew just long enough to pull. Seeing as he's gone full skinhead, Yondu can't get a grip – but his cracked nails dig against Kraglin's scalp, biting in until they sting. “How's about we make a couple more memories though? Just in case ya get tempted?”

 

* * *

 

So really, they're asking to be walked in on.

Kraglin jumps when he hears the grate of the opening pilot's hatch, cock twitching against the grip of Yondu's body. Ain't no time to pull out and retuck. He shifts _forwards,_ moving on panic more than calculation, and winds up with the bottom half of his body awkwardly rammed under the console overhang.

Yondu passes through the metal like it's made of vapor. He emerges from the field of buttons and switches and crack-screened, fog-glassed dials, face registering shock. His ass clamps like it plans on wrenching away and taking Kraglin's cock with it.

That would be a shitty end to a marvellous day. Fighting to get a handle on his breathing, and praying to every god whose believers have ever graced the Ravager rosters that his face ain't turned fluorescent, Kraglin props himself on the chairarms. He manages to sit without tipping Yondu backwards into the cockpit glass. The chair curves around the shape of a seated man, its lip sticking out over the pilot's lap so he can reach as many command keys as possible. Rocket's already working on building himself an extension for the footpedals – and a booster seat, although he'd tried to claw out Kraglin's eyes last time he called it that. To the Guardians, it'll look like Kraglin simply dozed off where he sat – unsurprising, given how dark the bruise-like blotches have gotten under his eyes, ever since a certain casket was loaded into the incinerator and dedicated to the void.

He waves. His dopy expression, as Yondu's ass wrings around him, goes a way towards making his cover story believable.

“Sup guys,” he greets, faking a yawn and hoping his hitchy voice can be blamed on morning gruffness. “S'rry – fell asleep. I'll be outta yer hair in a moment...”

Peter diverts Drax down a corridor, and points Rocket, Mantis and Gamora after him. He shoots Kraglin a harried smile. “Don't apologize! You get some rest. We won't be long – if you wake up soon, you can help us carry the rest of the new gear in.”

“Well, _that_ ain't exactly motivational,” Rocket complains. Peter stoops to cuff the back of his head without looking – a gesture that must be familiar to Yondu, who'd done much the same to his own small pet when it gave him sass-back and lip. Kraglin rests a steadying hand on the patch of thigh that pokes from the console. Skin glimmers like static is running under its surface. Kraglin kneads there, relishing the strength in that firm blue brawn, pressing just hard enough to threaten dissolution, until the Guardians have petered out and he's free to enjoy his cap'n in solitude.

As he watches Peter lead his newfangled crew away from them, lugging ship-parts of varying gradations of rust and disrepair under arms, over heads, and strapped to backs by leafy tendrils, Yondu's expression twists. It becomes something raw and open, unfitting for a Ravager captain. Yondu might not be one of those no more, but Kraglin still wants that look off his face.

He bucks, knot catching on the pinch of Yondu's rim for a glorious second before it pops inside. Yondu quivers head to toe – not that Kraglin can see those, given that they're currently buried in the shuttle's cockpit circuitry, along with his legs and the majority of his abdomen. And dammit, but he sure hopes Yondu's zaps only effect biotic matter. Otherwise they'll be facing even more fried equipment, a heftier bill, and – scariest of all – a pissed-off raccoon.

He could think of a thousand analogies, a hundred metaphors for what it's like to sink dick-first into a ghost, but they all swim back to the same concepts. It's like sticking your cock in an irradiated fleshlight, or a bunch of violet wands. Like kissing bare cables or trying to fuck a power socket. Dangerous, most likely. Stupid, undoubtedly. Fun? Absolutely.

“So you're only hard when you're touching me,” he pants, marvelling at the way Yondu slides through the console array with each squirming bounce.

Yondu snorts, as Kraglin knew he would. “Ain't no changes there, Obfonteri. An' quit talkin' – this takes concentration.” His body squeezes slow and controlled, muscle rippling up and down in practiced clenches. The sensation has Kraglin's eyeballs questing out the insides of his skull.

If Yondu's ass is a power coil then his laugh is rich smoke, curling out of him in husks as he bends over Kraglin's torso. He reaches beneath himself to test the flare of that knot before grinding down onto it with a final, victorious squelch. He even manages to do it without leaking glitter.

 

* * *

 

Peter, for all his guff about his mama watching over him from the Great Beyond, has no way of knowing Yondu's spirit lingers. A part of Kraglin wants to keep it that way.

He knows it's wrong. He knows it's selfish, and cruel. Not just to Peter but to Yondu too. But hell. For three months prior to Peter's desertion, he'd watched his captain spiral towards self-destruction. Soulless sex with robots was just the tip of the iceberg. Yondu had pissed off Stakar, his own crew, and Kraglin into the bargain, all within the space of twelve weeks. And all because of Peter Quill.

Now, Kraglin knows there's a bond there that he can't quite grasp the depths of, let alone appreciate. He tolerates Quill – even likes the goofy kid, most of the time – because he knows how much he means to cap'n. Just because cap'n is for all intents and purposes dead, doesn't change that. But there's a Ravager gnawing on the inside of Kraglin's skull, demanding an eye for an eye, an orb for an orb, a four billion bounty for one of equal standing if not greater. Yondu could brush that sum off, apparently. He'd broken away from Stakar and founded a renegade faction, whose flames were spat at by every self-respecting mercenary-serving establishment across the starways, and who prided themselves on their reputation for doing any job no matter how dirty, and loving it too. But despite all that, there's still a softness there, if you only dig deep enough. Like the marrow at the core of a bone.

Kraglin, alternatively, is cartilage. Not brittle enough to snap, not too sturdy to bend.

He's been through a lot recently – heartache and heartbreak, and the sound of Yondu's fading cardiogram, which echoes in his ears each night-cycle he spends alone. But as he lounges on the pilot's seat, watching the flock of traders through the one-way glass with Yondu sandwiched against him skin-to-jumpsuit, he could be forgiven for thinking it's all gonna be okay. He's got Yondu. Yondu's bare feet are cilpping through the arm of the chair like a glitch in a video game, but that's inconsequential. At the end of the day, Yondu's all he needs.

 

* * *

 

Which is why when he wakes up to find Peter watching him grimly, fin tucked under his crossed arms and Yondu nowhere in sight, he can be forgiven for panicking.

“Qu-Quill? The hell, man? I thought you was gonna let me sleep!”

“I did,” Quill replies. He looks pale and sweaty, like he's seen a ghost – and for one moment, Kraglin wonders...

“Did you put the fin on?”

“What? No!” Quill actually looks repulsed. Kraglin understands why. It'd be like wearing a dead man's coat. If the fin weren't the only memento he had of Yondu, Kraglin would have tossed it in the incinerator with all his other baubles. But then he'd never have made contact, and Yondu would never have been able to stop him stumbling out the airlock mid-night shift, and this whole situation would be a helluva lot uglier than it already is.

“So what's the big deal?” He has to wrestle his vocal cords into compliance. They don't want to politely enquire about Peter's motivations; they want to growl and snarl and demand that he hand the fin over, _right this instant..._

Peter chews his lip, sucking it far enough into his mouth that he can taste stubble. “You talk in your sleep,” he says eventually. “And Kraglin... Kraglin, I'm thinking that maybe we oughta get you some help. Yondu... He's not here no more. And it sucks, and I'm sorry, but there's nothing you or I can do to change that.”

“You could give me the damn fin back.” Peter's eyebrows winch towards his hairline.

“What? How's that supposed to do anything?”

Despite his petty sense of ownership over this secret, Kraglin always knew he'd have to tell Quill eventually – for Yondu's sake, if nothing else. He gestures tiredly, propping one elbow on the console (and breathing a sigh of relief when he sees he remembered to zip up his pants). “Put it on. Just once.”

Now Peter's looking at him like he's _really_ crazy. “Um. Why?”

“You'll see. Don't'chu trust me, after everything?”

 _I trust you,_ Peter's ticking cheek seems to say, as he gingerly lifts the fin and plasters it over his hair. _I don't trust whatever you've been snorting._ His curly thatch makes it difficult for the fin to settle; it lists slightly, Peter having to grasp it to hold it in place.

“Okay,” he says, pinning Kraglin with a frown. “Now what?”

Kraglin smiles. He can hear the hope in Peter's voice – stupid Terran sentiment. And if he can hear it, so can Yondu. “Now? We wait.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hopefully fixed the spelling mistakes now... Thanks to all my amazing commenters! You are my motivation. Please do rec this fic on tumblr/other platforms etc if you enjoy it!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which Kraglin and Peter wait, and the author apologizes in advance.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yep this is officially the sappiest thing I've ever written (I needed it after Gotg 2, hush)**

They wait for five minutes.

Ten.

Fifteen.

By twenty, Quill's moving his weight from foot to foot, glancing at his watch, and sighing loud enough to make the hairs on Kraglin's arms gust in the breeze. Never does he make an indication that he can see a grinning blue jackass, perched on the console and bare-ass naked.

By thirty, Kraglin's getting nervous.

He lurches to his feet, whites of his eyes showing round the iris. “Yer hair's in the way. That's gotta be it – the fin can't connect unless there's contact -”

Peter whistles. The arrow jiggles about in Kraglin's holster. But there's no corresponding puff of glitter dust, and no shout of alarm as Yondu materializes like a genie from a lantern. It's as if he doesn't see Yondu at all. Although he's there, he's got to be...

“C'mon, you a-hole,” Kraglin growls. “Don't you stand me up. Don't you dare.” Peter's expression flip-flops between bewildered and concerned.

“Kraglin -”

“C'mon, cap'n. I know you can hear me. Show yerself already.”

“Kraglin?”

“This ain't funny, okay! This ain't fuckin' funny! Hahaha, yeah, big joke for the blue man! But I ain't laughing, Yondu! I! Ain't! Laughing!”

“Kraglin!”

Peter's yell makes no impact. But the crack as his hand meets the Ravager mate's stubbly cheek more than compensates. Kraglin lurches to the side, gasping, spit flecking his beard. “What?” he asks hoarsely.

Peter examines his hand, finding the damp streaks where he'd hit tears. He scrolls back through Kraglin's little speech. Comes to some stupid, erroneous conclusion, one which makes Kraglin's guts contract with fury. His dumb Terran eyes exude a compassion that's neither wanted nor needed. When Kraglin snatches for the prosthetic, Peter wrenches it off his head, taking a clump of hair along for the ride, and hides it behind his back, out of reach.

“Uh-uh. I don't think that's a good idea.”

“No! You don't understand! I gotta! I gotta do this, Peter, I gotta see him! I gotta prove it to you – he's here, he is, I swear!”

“I believe you,” says Peter. But Kraglin sees through him.

“No, you believe that _I believe that._ There's a difference! Peter, it's true! Lemme have the fin, lemme show you -”

Peter sidles for the exit, moving slow as a spooked crab and staring at him all the while, as if Kraglin won't notice his retreat if he only retains eye contact. “How're you going to do that?”

“I'll ask him somethin' only you guys know! Look, it just... It takes time, man. Took me a whole damn week! You just gotta believe it. You gotta want it, _need it_ bad enough...”

“You think I don't?” Given that Kraglin's the one on the verge of bawling, possibly even begging for Peter to stop being cruel, stop being wicked, and just to give the fin back to him, dammit; Peter's sharp tone comes as a shock. “You think I don't miss seeing his dumb blue mug every hour of every day? You think I didn't for those three months before... Before Ego... Before Ayesha and her weird gold-faced Sovereign goons, and Taserface and Mantis and Stakar and... And everything?”

It's the most Kraglin's heard Peter say on the subject since he was dragged into the tractor-beam hold, wrapped around Yondu's corpse, a boy inside the body of a man who clung to his daddy for comfort, even though daddy wasn't ever coming back. Of course, back then Peter's vocabulary had been a lot more stunted. He'd just about managed 'no'. He'd repeated that until he was choking on it, hyperventilating in sharp snatches. Even with tears streaming from his eyes, he'd pushed out that _no_ until his face turned blue as the body in his arms...

Kraglin swallows. He turns into profile, not wanting to acknowledge Peter's quivering fists, or his trembling chin. “I didn't say that.”

Peter points at him. He forgets that he's holding the fin, and winds up jabbing it in Kraglin's face, gripping the metal so tight that Kraglin's terrified it's going to crack. But Peter's Celestial Gifts have been washed out with the bathwater – or with the explosion of the planet he called _father;_ same difference. “You didn't have to. We're both messed up, man. Of course we are. We've been through _shit –_ but that doesn't mean we can slap a pretty dream over everything and make it go away! Like a freaking bandaid! Reality doesn't work like that, Kraglin.”

“You're lecturin' _me_ on losin' people.” Kraglin stands his ground. That's rare, when there's no captain to hide behind. He sneers into Peter's seething face, the fin bisecting his vision. Those two halves struggle to consolidate: he sees a pair of Peters that wave and wobble the more Kraglin tries to focus, almost like there's water in the way. “Taserface shot my friends out the airlock, Petey. One after another. Every. Single. One. And there was fuck-all I could do to stop him. They was my family, like the Guardians is yours. But I thought... I thought 'hey, I still got Yondu! At least I ain't alone!'" His mouth tightens, chin crinkling in on itself. "And then you had to go visit your damn daddy.”

“He wasn't my daddy!”

“That's right he wasn't! But you still went with him, and Yondu still ran after you to get'chu out of trouble, like he always does, even when everyone around him tells him it's suicide! And he saved your fuckin' life and he died, and I ain't convinced it was worth it -”

...Yondu's standing somewhere in the vicinity, even if Kraglin can't see him. He doesn't need to hear this. Kraglin shuts his jaw with an audible snap. Peter winces.

“Wow.”

It's all Kraglin can do not to punch him. “Gimme the fin, Quill,” he says, beckoning with all four fingers. Peter shakes his head.

“Buddy, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna do that. Not until you've talked to someone about this. Someone qualified -”

Kraglin's laugh is ragged. He imagines that Yondu's laughing too, and that the sound is as voluminous and full-bellied as ever, ricocheting around the shuttle cockpit a beat out of sync with Kraglin's hearing. “A shrink, you mean.”

“Someone who can help you,” Peter insists. He waggles the fin, sneering at it like he's begrudging it for being here while Yondu isn't. “I don't think it's good for you, to be clinging onto this.”

He can't take it away. He can't. He doesn't understand! Kraglin's barely had Yondu back seven days. If he loses him again, so soon... He can't face that. Not for the second time.

“If you take that crest,” he says slowly, looking Peter dead in the eyes. His hick accent – the same accent he'd picked up from spending too much time with Yondu – slips away. He strives to enunciate every syllable, as if that will prove to Peter he's being fully serious. “You take it away and you're killing me, Pete.”

Peter takes another step towards the door. He looks between it and Kraglin. He takes it all in: his sweaty, dishevelled jumpsuit; his face that's beakier than ever without the mohawk to provide visual balance from above; the cold sweat that varnishes his sickly pallor; his outstretched, clawlike hand. The crest drops. It bounces twice before tipping on its side, clattering back and forth like a spun coin, then finally lies still.

“Take it,” says Peter hoarsely. “But we're headed straight for the clinics on Xandar. Don't fight me on this Kraglin – I can't lose you too.”

See, the thing is, Kraglin's a Ravager. He knows when it's in his interests to lie, and to make it convincing. “Sure thing,” he says, almost jigging back and forth. He doesn't _want_ to sprint to the fin, scoop it up, pet it like it's a goddam lost puppy. And yet there's muscle bunching up and down his scrawny legs, ready to propel him forwards the moment Peter's gone. “You, me, doctor. No problemo.”

He's gonna be on an escape pod by morning, jetting towards the open stars. But first, he needs to put the fin back on and he needs to see Yondu.

 

* * *

 

“They're tryin' to make me see a doctor! Can you imagine that? A _doctor!_ Me! I only seen the _Eclector_ Sawbones twice in a whole damn decade -”

“Yeah,” says Yondu, slouched on the flight console. “I heard ya the first five times. You can make all the age cracks ya like, Kraggles, but I ain't actually gone deaf.”

How come he can use it as a seat when he'd been fucked through it – quite literally – not an hour before? Kraglin brushes that conundrum under the proverbial rug, to rest alongside the others (why Yondu has his short fin back, why he can't make clothes but can reform himself from glitterdust whenever Kraglin squeezes him too hard, and why he's fulfilling every one of Kraglin's fantasies – groping in public, morning blowjobs, riding him on the pilot's chair – like he's working his way down a checklist). He paces back and forth, fin a constant ache.

“He didn't believe me either,” he says, shaking his head – and wincing, as the crest tries to pull it too far in either direction. “After everything we've done for him, boss. That ungrateful lil' shit – hey wait.”

Yondu's practising flicking buttons. His tongue pokes from between his crooked teeth. Half the time, his fingernail skids through the plastic, but for the rest, Kraglin can almost convince himself he can hear the click. “Wassup?”

“Why didn't you show yerself to him? D'you need him to wear the crest for a while, like I did?”

Yondu shrugs. “Heck if I know. But to be honest, I ain't so keen on my boy's first impression of his old man after he comes back from the dead bein' as a starkers ghost.” He shifts a little, grimacing. “Still all sticky inside, thanks to you.”

Oh yeah. He'd jizzed in a ghost. Kraglin feels despicably proud of himself for that. “You ain't gonna leave stains, are ya?” he says, gesturing to the console. Hell, if all Yondu can touch is biotic matter, then perhaps he'll get him to write a message to Peter using Kraglin's blood. Cum would definitely be a bit weird though.

The answer is revealed when Yondu stands.

“Aw hell.” Kraglin darts over and wipes at the puddle with his sleeve, groaning when he only manages to smear it. Cream gathers in the pits around the launch sequence toggle-keys. “Gamora's gonna kill me... Shit. Think you could grab me a towel?”

“Where are they?”

“In the shower block – wait. Ghost. You ain't gonna be able to pick it up.”

Yondu, halfway to the door, pauses guilty as charged. “Hell.”

Trickles braid down his thighs. Kraglin's usually pretty proud of being, in Yondu's words, a 'titan-damned cum-o-matic'. But not when his future ability to digest food without the aid of medical apparatus is endangered – which he suspects it might be, if Gamora catches wind of this.

“Shit-shit-shit." He snatches his poncho from over the back of the chair, mopping Yondu as best he can. He's been meaning to dirty up his outfit ever since Gamora got her pretty green laundry-loving hands on it, and while this ain't _quite_ what he intended, it's doing the trick. Yondu stands for the duration of the sponging, crooking his knees and twisting his legs so Kraglin can catch all the drops. He accidentally bangs the fin off Yondu's knee as he stoops to catch a stray bead that's rolling anklewards. “Ow.”

“Yeah sir, try having an implant poking you in the face all night for twenty-plus years.” Kraglin finishes with a pat, scrunching up his poncho and lobbing it in the chair's vague direction. “There we go. Good as new.”

Yondu preens under the attention. Having him so happy to be pampered, not ordering Kraglin to get back to work or fretting over who might spot them, is unusual. Some might say _too_ unusual. Almost like...

He hadn't wanted to consider the possibility when Yondu first appeared. Still doesn't, to be honest, despite Peter's warnings. And yet...

“Cap'n,” Kraglin says carefully. Not so carefully that it sounds like he's trying to gauge his reaction – or at least, he hopes not. “Can you think of anything you could tell me that I wouldn't know, but you and Peter might? Something I can use to convince him that you're real?”

Kraglin himself doesn't need persuading. None at all. Zip, nada, zilch. So why's Yondu looking at him like that?

“What?” Yondu settles squarely on his feet, arms crossed. “You startin' to think I ain't here? That I'm all in yer head? Is that what this is, Obfonteri?”

 _Maybe._ “Course not!” Kraglin lies. “You're here. I can see you, touch you, fuck you...” And god, but if this awful hunch proves correct, Kraglin doesn't want to imagine what the camera feed will reveal. Him jerking off alone, wiping jizz on the monitor, towelling at midair? Pathetic. His voice trails off. Yondu's expression grows ever-more thunderous.

“Take the fin off, boy.”

“What?” Kraglin feels like they've been saying that a lot, as of late. Yondu's scowl only grows, eating up his weathered blue cheeks.

“I said _take off the fuckin' fin_. If you ain't gonna believe I'm here, there ain't no point in me staying.”

Wow. Talk about nought to one hundred. But life with Yondu is always spent in the fast-lane (usually, in Kraglin's experience, clinging on by white-knuckled while cap'n barrels into the battle, laughing like a madman and not caring how much collateral damage he leaves in his wake).

“Just say something only Peter would know,” he wheedles, stepping back when Yondu tries to knock off the fin by force and only winds up phasing through it, making himself angrier into the bargain. “Something I couldn't have thought up on the spot. Please, cap'n. For me _and_ for him.”

Yondu's snarl transmutes into something nastier. “You sure ya wanna know the answer to that boy? To whether I'm really here, or just in yer head?”

No point being anything other than honest. “No,” Kraglin says. “And I don't think you want to either.”

Jackpot. Rage animates Yondu's face, enlivening that fascinating topography of creases and scars. But it proves brittle at Kraglin's words. What takes its place when the anger crumbles – widening eyes, flaring nostrils, clenching mouth and a stiffness that borders paralysis – is far worse. Kraglin's seen his cap'n through every emotion under the galaxy's billion suns: laughing and lazy, horny and harried. But it's a rare day indeed when cap'n is _afraid._

It doesn't suit him. Kraglin grabs Yondu's hands, bundling blue fingers together with his own. “Sir? Even if you are something my brain chucked out to stop me throwin' myself out the airlock? Even then, sir, I wouldn't care.” Yondu's glare calls bullshit. Kraglin amends himself. “Well. Okay, I would. But boss? I'd rather go crazy than be without ya.”

Yondu lets him hold his hands for a full ten seconds. Even shuffles in to rest his forehead on Kraglin's collarbones, so Kraglin can hook his chin over his head and breathe mist on his implant, watching the fog grow and recede against cool crystal.

“Fuckin' sap,” he says. Kraglin accepts the criticism gracefully.

 

* * *

 

He's no longer guaranteed prime spot on the musty pelts of the cap'n's nest. That's gone up in flames, along with the rest of the ship they once called home: the city-sized fortress that the pair of them had built up from nothing, dragging chunks of salvaged schooner and blasted-open Nova frigate and hand-welding 'em to the sides of the shuttle Yondu'd stolen, after Stakar laid down the law and made it so no crew of repute would ever stand by him.

Luckily, back then a 'crew of repute' was the last thing Yondu wanted. And scum flocked to you when you provided them with somewhere to sleep, moonshine on tap, wages to cover whores, a hefty and well-stocked armory, and the biweekly chance to butcher someone.

It's a shame to bid all that goodbye. When Yondu gave the order to get the shuttle ready for decoupling, Kraglin had suspected that the rest of the ship wouldn't outlive them. The fireball that ate up half the rear holodisplay had still come as a shock – a punch to the chest, the sudden realization that that chapter of their lives was over. But Kraglin can't hold the demise of the _Eclector_ against Yondu. Firstly because, well, Taserface had deserved it. And secondly because Yondu is dead.

But he's also right here. And when he gives the order – “Don't you fuckin' dare walk away from Quill, not now” – Kraglin has no choice but to obey. So when their shuttle finally chugs into Xandar's dock, the escape pod remains battened under its hatch where it belongs.

There's no sign of Ego's terraforming. The people of Xandar must be used to global extermination attempts by now. They're all smiles when the Guardian's motley band – plus Mantis and Kraglin – come tramping down the gangway. There's the portly Nova officer that Kraglin recognizes from the Ronan-incident, jogging out to meet them with a friendly wheeze. Peter claps him on the back. “Dey!”

Dey returns the gesture. “Starlord!” And Kraglin, watching Yondu from the corner of his eye, sees him grin like he's feeding off Peter's jubilation, as the boy fist-pumps and mouths 'hell yeah' over Dey's shoulder.

He couldn't imagine that, could he? Yeah, he's spent hours peeking at his captain over the years. Just... being near him, saturated in his presence. Probably enough time to soak up all the details that make this simulation – if that's what the Yondu before him is – perfect, down to the smallest wrinkle in the corner of his eyes. But that warmth as Yondu watches his boy being welcomed as a hero? Ain't no feigning that.

...Or so Kraglin'd like to think. He lets Yondu precede him down the gangplank – and sneers at Rocket, who observes his sidestepping with a frown.

How much has Peter told his crew? Kraglin ain't the most sociable, so they can't have found his avoidance of them odd. His gaze skates over them mistrustfully, one at a time, lingering on the rodent and the tree. He'd gotten along with them, in the strained-but-hardforged way of people thrown together in a crisis. Perhaps they'll be more amenable to his captain's return than Peter, who's bundled himself up in the surety that Yondu's never coming back so that he can't be hurt again.

Kraglin understands it. It's basic self-preservation. But when that self-preservation means Peter lags to the back of his group and wraps an inescapable, warm Terran hand round Kraglin's upper arm, and murmurs “We're headed in a different direction,” Kraglin wonders if his promise to stay was worth it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **All I can say is that I promise there'll be a happy ending xxx**


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **In which seven days pass.**

**Day 1**

Peter might have let him keep the fin, but the institution won't. They'll hand it to the Corps, who will take it away to prod and poke at, and potentially exorcise Yondu by accident. Kraglin and Yondu have talked this through, during the dead of the night cycle when Peter, who's been sticking to his old first mate like a parasitic louse, is snoring too loud to hear them. They know what's gotta be done. But while he's convinced his cap'n that he can survive a week without him – just one week, a measly seven days of Xandarian-Central Time – Kraglin's not so sure himself.

Nevertheless, he's playing nice. He passes the fin to Peter. The arrow harness follows, Kraglin holding on so that they grip the worn leather straps simultaneously.

“Use it,” he says quietly. “Promise me that. Use it every fuckin' day, you hear me?” He cuts off the protest before it can begin. “I know ya don't like it. But do it for me. If yer shuttin' me away in here, it's the least you can do.”

Peter looks guilty. Kraglin just prays that guilt is enough to make him do his bidding, while he's strapped up in a straitjacket.

Only no straitjacket's provided, and no orderlies swoop down to accost him with electrodes and sedation needles the moment Peter's back is turned and he's muttered his goodbyes. Kraglin's welcomed by a polite Xandarian woman, her nurse's uniform as neatly pressed as the rest of her. “Hello, sir. Can I take your name?”

Kraglin tells her. He watches the press of her manicured nails against the floating keys of the holo-board, inputting the characters one by one. Each time she touches it, the lights snag around her fingertip, a miniature distortion rippling out like she's poked the surface of a pond. Those ripples grow and recede, one for each letter of _Kraglin Obfonteri._ While Kraglin may never have learned how to read, he squints at his reversed view of the little gold squiggles and thinks to himself: _that's me._

It's been a while since he was logged on any system. Last time was when he got sent to the Kyln, frogmarched between two guards and rammed in a poky cell to serve out his sentence for stealing a loaf of bread, or whatever else it was he'd done to get indicted at seventeen. (So stealing a loaf of bread, and putting a plasma bolt through the head of the storeowner who chased him down the street. What? He'd panicked. And it wasn't as if that was his first kill – although when Kraglin bragged about that to the Nova Corps, they trussed him up and dumped him in solitary, for some unfathomable reason. Spoilsports.) His stint in this institution already promised to be a lot more pleasant. Once she'd finished with the basic logs, the woman offered Kraglin a smile – chipper in the way of retail workers at the start of the day, so a little plastic but not painfully forced. She bent over the counter to talk to him, the modest collar of her shirt forming symmetrical creases.

“Okay, honey. Do you have any bags? Any possessions?”

Kraglin shook his head. He's never been much of a hoarder. Of course, this meant that Yondu'd seen fit to commandeer the bedside table on his half of the cabin for trinket display. His excuse was that, as captain, technically it _all_ belonged to him. He wasn't wrong. And while dusting 'em was a nightmare, on the rare occasion they bothered with spring cleaning, Kraglin didn't begrudge him the space. At the time, he'd been grateful that Yondu'd even cordoned off one side of the bed as 'his'. Maybe he did that for all his partners – but Kraglin had decided to interpret it as a sign that he was there to stay.

And stay he had, because Yondu had never kicked him out. Well, that was a lie. Every other evening, Kraglin would wander to the captain's cabin, slap the lock, and have to snap to attention to prevent himself walking face-first into a still shut door. But that was just so his bunkmates didn't get suspicious. Relationships among Ravagers were, by necessity, a closely guarded secret. Yondu had been the one to decree, upon Stakar's outlawing of him and all who followed him, that sentiment made you weak. Kraglin doubted he'd considered that he might be the one to fall prey to it.

But while Yondu had occasionally refused to let him in – and in more ways than one, until Kraglin caught him pacing the length of their room at night, in between sleepily whittling away at a crude crest prototype, and had pressed and prodded and nagged despite the threat of an arrow between the eyes until a story spilled out, a story of slaves and parents and little blue boys kept chained for their masters' amusement – he'd never told him not to come back. Kraglin had diligently tested that door every night of his tenure with the Ravager band, since he and the cap'n started sticking dicks in each other. And as the years passed, he found it opened more often than it didn't.

Kraglin's sure some of the crew had guessed. Contrary to common opinion, they weren't all idiots. Just... a healthy portion of them. 'Strategy meeting' could only be bandied as an excuse so many times. And while it was wise for any cap'n and his mate to keep each other well-informed of the ins and outs of their shifts (as Kraglin and Yondu had worked opposite hours, supervising as much of the galleon's operation-cycle as possible between them, and snatching time together only when one was half-awake and the other half-asleep) having a catch-up every single night, especially one accompanied by the unmistakable thump of a headboard off the wall, stretched the boundaries of the Ravagers' collective imaginations a little further than they were ever meant to go.

“Sir?” says the receptionist. Oh yeah. There's a question he's supposed to answer. Kraglin shakes his head. She nods, prim and professional, not questioning why a man would be sent here with nothing but the clothes on his back. “I'll organize for a welcome package to be waiting for you in your room. For now, you can either go straight there and relax before dinner, or we can get started on your orientation immediately.”

He's done so much _relaxing_ lately that his legs are ready to atrophy from the thought of sitting down. “I'll take that guided tour please, ma'am.” He even manages a smile. It's a disappointment when the lady's eyes bug and she recoils, before catching herself and asking over intercom for Kraglin's allotted patient-buddy. Kraglin winces. Oh yeah. Metal teeth ain't the height of fashion on this planet.

The door slides open, unaccompanied by the screech of unoiled runners he's become accustomed to. The absence of that sound is disconcerting, like an ulcer in his mouth that he can't stop probing with his tongue. A reminder that, while this place with its sunny yellow walls and big bright holoscreen simulations of blossom-filled parks and reflection-filled fountains is _nice,_ it ain't his home.

He focuses on the person inside the doorway, instead of the doorway itself. They're small, rotund, and with a face that would be reminiscent of a gerbil, if Kraglin only knew what a gerbil was. He wonders if they're friends with Rocket. Then figures it's probably racist to ask whether all upright-walking critters know each other, and keeps his mouth shut. He opts for a waggle of fingers instead, and another smile – although this time he's wise enough to plaster his lips over his mottled fangy assortment.

“Hi,” says gerbil-face. Turns out that's the furriest part of her – the hand she sticks out to shake is bald and petal pink. Kraglin grips it with all due delicacy, pincering the fragile palm and treating it to two careful pumps. “I'm Gii. What's your name?”

“Kraglin,” Kraglin supplies. He's already a little tired of talking – never did have the most durable social barriers, and he's rarely had to make nice with so many new people who he doesn't plan on robbing. He absolutely refuses to case the place as he saunters along besides her, moving slow so his long legs don't overtake her. Doesn't even check for camera blind spots. Well, he _does,_ but only on instinct, not because he's looking for them.

“You're wearing your own clothes,” he notes, when it becomes apparent that Gii's gait isn't going to let them finish this tour this side of the astral millennium. Better make conversation, however stunted, than amble in awkward silence. “They let ya do that?”

Gii looks surprised he asked. “Of course! This isn't a prison, y'know.” Kraglin puffs up, assuming she's seen the flame patch on his sleeve and put two and two together. Just because he's a Ravager doesn't mean he's spent a solid portion of his life behind bars. Or rather, it does _,_ but Kraglin resents the stereotyping. Gii raises her little pink hands. “Sorry! That's my line to all newbies. I've been in and out of here for years, so I'm the one who usually shows folks around. Stars know why, when I come up to your knees. Sorry for the slow pace.”

Kraglin shrugs. “I could always carry you?”

Gii stares at him a moment, to check if he's being serious. Then frowns. “You don't offer to carry Pugaha.”

That must be her race. Kraglin smirks right back. “You don't ask Ravagers about living behind bars. Deal?”

The stalemate lasts all of three paces – six, for Gii. Then she laughs. The ice cracks, she slaps his calf good-naturedly, and they go on their way.

Slowly. Very, very slowly. He'd like to say it doesn't bother him. After all, while Yondu may be beefy, he's also a good head Kraglin's shorter. Keeping abreast with slower walkers is instinctive. But while Kraglin opted into this tour, a part of him wants to curl up in an empty room without having to acknowledge anyone or anything, and barricade himself with mental walls until he stops thinking about his cap'n.

Seven whole days. How the fuck's he gonna cope?

At least the leisurely pace gives him time to appreciate the details. The Nova Corps haven't spared any expenses.

“Issat a sports holodeck?” He doesn't _quite_ run and stick his nose against the glass. _Quite._ In the sleek white room beyond, people of varying heights, colors and clothing styles are flailing their arms, running on treadmills or dancing wildly to an unheard beat, the only sign that they're logged into a wider network the overhead display screens and the lights that glance neon-bright from inside their goggles. There's a spare set in the corner, and Kraglin itches to try them. This is the sort of fancy recreational shit he's only seen in Xandar-owned Nova ships. He'd asked Yondu if they could loot a whole holo-rig once, citing the fact that an entertained crew is a crew less likely to mutiny. Yondu had cited right back that a Ravager crew is assured to break any expensive piece of equipment that comes into their hands within a week. Far more pragmatic to flog the thing on the blackmarket, and spend the profits on those tried-and-tested means of pleasure: booze, robot whores, skink-fighting rings.

Kraglin hadn't argued, because Kraglin never argued (at least, never outside the captain's quarters, and with volumes that never exceeded a quiet grumble. Except that one time when Nebula shot Yondu in the head and everything went so horribly wrong – but it's best not to think about that.) However, he had perhaps, just possibly, been a bit disappointed.

“Wow,” he breathes, watching the display on the screens as an overweight Xandarian clumsily pitches a ball at a batter at the hall's other end, who smacks it straight into orbit. “I wanna go -”

For an instant, he swears he hears Yondu sniggering. _Run along an' play then, idjit._

To say that 'his blood runs cold' would be insensitive, considering what'd happened to Yondu when he broke through Ego's atmosphere. But right now, Kraglin can't think of a better analogy. It's like someone has poured ice into his heart and let it pump through his system. He steps away from the door, face ashen. Gii observes him, hand sneaking out to snag on his boot, as if that'll be of any help if he crumples. 

“You alright? You're not going to faint, are you?”

Kraglin shakes his head. It's just a memory. That's all. He sent the fin with Peter, didn't he? Ergo, Yondu can't be here. Kraglin can't hear him, or see him, because the Yondu he was talking to yesterday is a real, tangible ghost (as antithetical as that might sound) whose spirit is entangled with a real, tangible piece of prosthetic equipment. He doesn't only exist in Kraglin's mind. That's ludicrous.

“I think,” he says quietly, looking anywhere but Gii, “I'd like to go to my room now. If thas okay.”

Gii nods. She doesn't seem to understand what was going on, but equally looks unperturbed, as if this is a perfectly normal way to end a conversation. Who knows? Perhaps for her, it is. She lives surrounded by crazies – heck, she is one herself. But Kraglin ain't like her. He doesn't _need_ help. He's only here for the duration of time it takes for Peter to make the connection with Yondu. And then? Back to the open stars.

 

* * *

 

**Day 2**

“Here's your schedule.” Gii sits besides Kraglin on his bed. It's high for her. He'd offered her a hand up, which had been scoffed at, before she swarmed the bedpost to deposit herself on the mattress besides him. If Kraglin had been impressed with this place on first arrival, by the morning, by which time he's submitted to being shown around again and has successfully completed the tour without Yondu-spotting incidents, he's awed. Awed and very, very comfortable. Apparently, this institution works on the theory that you can never have too much memory foam. Kraglin approves.

However, the schedule throws up a flaw. Kraglin waggles the data pad back and forth. Then turns it upside down, in the hopes that flipping the damn thing might make the tight crammed letters decipherable. He knows _some_ words, and he can spell phonetically if left alone for ten minutes with uninterrupted concentration. But it takes time and effort, and he dislikes doing it in front of people. It'd be so much easier if -

“Audial key's on the back of the pad,” says Gii, pointing. Kraglin grins at her. He remembers just in time, and claps his hand over his mouth – but Gii smiles back, showing off her ruminant-teeth, the incisors hooking over her underlip. “Nice to find someone with worse dentistry than me. You wanna listen alone, or should I go?”

He considers. Shakes his head. “Nah, you stay right here. I might need ya to explain what some of this shit's about. Like uh. Medication? Don't got none of that.”

“You'll be visiting a doctor first. See here?” Gii points to the appropriate cell on the chart that will define Kraglin's life for the next seven days. It's been color-coded for his convenience. That's good – Kraglin puts the shade and the concept together in his mind, logs it in his bank of _things to remember,_ and nods.

“Just a physical?” Maybe he can finally get that tapeworm sorted out... Yondu always did bitch that he was too bony to use as a comfortable pillow – and that sometimes, in the middle of the night, it kicked. But Gii shakes her head.

“Nah. They'll be testing for psychoses. Asking a load of questions – this is a mental health center, after all. C'mon then.” She nudges his knee. “Spill. Everyone'll be clamoring to know as soon as you're released into the communal areas – but they're all way too polite to ask outright.”

Kraglin snorts. “And you ain't?”

“Damn right I'm not. Tell me, beanpole. Why're you in here? You practice slitting your wrists one time too many?”

This is the sort of person Kraglin can get along with. Blunt, forthright, says what's on their mind... That doesn't mean he's any more comfortable discussing this: the most taboo of subjects, even among Ravagers. “Almost jumped out an airlock,” he says, fingering where the strands of his mohawk that he missed shaving are sticking to the back of his neck. “Twice.”

Gii goggles. “No shit?”

“No shit. And, uh. Y'know. I been seein' my um. My.” Words stick in his throat. In a way, it's a relief to finally talk about this. But conceptualizing what Yondu means to him? What he and Yondu mean to _each_ _other_? That's far harder, and Kraglin stutters like he's being grilled by a judging panel. Gii pats his boot, offering comfort as best she can.

“Someone important to you.”

“The most important.” He even manages not to blush while saying it. “It wouldn't be a problem if they weren't. Uh, y'know...” This time he catches the mental stumbling block in advance. He finds the word, confronts it, and forces it out his mouth in a harsh plosive burst. “Dead.”

“Oh.” Gii blinks. “I'm sorry.”

“Nah. Issa. Uh. Hazard of the business, in our line of work.” He swallows. “You know what I am, right?”

Her gaze flicks to the flame on his sleeve. “They're going to make you take that off,” is all she says. “We're not allowed symbols that might cause other patients distress.”

 _Other patients who your band of space pirates have potentially traumatized/robbed/murdered the entire families of._ That goes without saying. Kraglin nods. He can live without the patch until Peter comes to his senses – it'll be like going incognito. Right now, for the first time since they dragged Yondu through the airlock, Peter wrapped around him like he could warm him back to life with bodyheat, and Yondu's bare skin crusted to the insides of his leathers in an icy cast, Kraglin has a chance to actually _talk_ about this. To explain – to a complete and total stranger – what witnessing that had been like.

In a way, the stranger-factor makes it easier. Gii doesn't know him. Not by name, not by rep. Kraglin's rap sheet had been given the full _tabula rasa_ treatment by the Nova Corps, after the Ravagers came to Xandar's rescue. He's reoffended of course – it had been a matter of pride. But he ain't clocked any crimes heinous enough to deserve more than a community sentence on Nova soil. Mostly because boss likes to send him to Xandar on trinket-hunting expeditions, and getting through customs is a helluva lot harder when you have the Fugitive Taskforce breathing down your neck.

“He was strong,” he tells Gii, lifting one foot to tuck under his bony ass. His arm loops his knee, hand squeezing on air, and he stares at the wall until he's convinced that the traces of blue around the corner of his vision are just in his imagination. _Yondu ain't here. Yondu's with the Guardians, because Yondu's real, and they're both coming back for me as soon as his idiot son pulls his head out his pink freckled ass._ “So strong. And beautiful too, y'know?” Not... physically. At least, not in the conventional sense of the word. But there's nothing Kraglin likes more than to watch the dance of that arrow: the power, the strength, the ability to mow down entire armies contained within that slim gold yaka rod... Yondu may not have the face, voice, or body of an angel. But, in Kraglin's opinion, he has the whistle, the battle prowess, and the ass of one, and that more than makes up for it. “And just. I really, really missed him.”

Gii nods along. “You're using past tense. That's a good sign.”

Oh. Right – it would be a mark of Crazy to claim Yondu had appeared to him as a ghost, convinced him thoroughly of his reality (with the aid of a several naked hugs and a morning suck-off) and ridden his dick in the pilot seat of the first shuttle they'd flown together. Heck, just thinking about it makes Kraglin feel loco. And without the fin here – and Yondu with it – to reassure him? There ain't nothing to do but acknowledge that doubt.

Kraglin shrinks on himself, chin burrowing into his chest. “Didn't happen all that long ago. I ain't nowhere near moved on.” He feels like he's flip-flopping wildly between emotions – one moment grateful to have the opportunity to discuss Yondu's death with someone that ain't Yondu himself, the next with his throat clamping and his hands resting like clammy lead weights on his lap. “Can we. Can we talk about something else?”

Gii's beady gerbil-eyes make it impossible to tell if she's projecting sympathy. That's good. Kraglin doesn't want to hate her. “What like?”

He shrugs one shoulder higher than the other. “Oh, I dunno. What you're doin' here? Tit for a bit of fuckin' tat?”

Gii nods. She shifts to stand – not that this makes much difference to her height, but Kraglin appreciates the effort. And then, ruining the effect somewhat, her head droops and she mumbles her answer into the front of her dungarees.

“What?”

Gii's head lifts an inch. She repeats herself. So does Kraglin. Gii sighs, and appraises him face-on. “I _said,_ my colony moved here as refugees. But there wasn't space on the first ship...” Kraglin decides now would not be a good time to point out how small the Pugaha are or that they could probably have wedged a few more of them in if aided by a toilet plunger and patience. “I was the youngest in my family, so they put me on board. Told me they'd be on the next transport. Waited every day by the docks, but they never came.”

'I'm sorry' sounds like he's tossing her words back in her face. “Oh,” Kraglin manages. Was a time he'd robbed refugee ships on their way to Xandar, figuring that if the civilians on board were weak enough to have to evacuate their planet rather than fighting the Kree, they'd make easy marks. He'd do it all over if given half the chance, but there's a wriggling sensation in his stomach that he doesn't recognize. Unless the tapeworm's had a growth spurt, he suspects it might be guilt. “Um...”

Luckily, Gii doesn't need him to fill the silence. She shuffles until her shoulder bumps Kraglin's shin, shooting him a small, damaged smile, the emotional impact of which is only slightly hampered by her big front teeth. “That was ten years ago. I'm the poster child for how grief can linger. And I would tell you it gets better, but...”

“But you're still in and out of this place,” Kraglin finishes for her. He forces a smile of his own. Then, once the silence broaches 'awkwardly sentimental' territory, fishes for the holopad with a _hem_ to clear his throat. “Uh. Next item on the agenda.” They could both use a subject change. “What's the yellow one?”

“Oh!” Gii's entire body perks, from fur to feet. “That's dinner! You'll hear the bell ring in a minute – c'mon, we'd better hurry if we wanna be first in the queue!”

 

* * *

 

**Day 3**

Kraglin glares at the doctor. The doctor does his best not to glare at Kraglin, but he's finding it increasingly difficult.

“Please, Mr Obfonteri,” he says. “I'm only trying to help.”

Kraglin eyes the shredded scrap of paper, the one which the doctor had informed him (after watching Kraglin struggling to mouth the letters to himself for five painful minutes) contains a prescription for anti-psychotics.

“I don't need this,” he says. Scrunches it in his fist and lobs it, with the unerring aim of a marksman, into the waste receptacle. The bottom of the pail is made of shiny holomatter. When anything solid contacts it, it sucks open and gulps its contents into the garbage chute, which weaves through this hospital's swanky, glibly-painted exterior like a septic vein. The doctor sighs. But this is Xandar, and forcible medicating is saved only for the most severe cases. Kraglin isn't deemed a danger to himself, or to others – although there's a distinct lack of sharp things in his room. He wonders if they'll mind him impersonating a woodsman. His body produces hair on a rate with Rocket's, and a week without shaving will be more than enough for him to grow a full beard. (According to Peter, after he joined the team the complaints of hair-clotted shower drains had quadrupled. This is impressive, given how rarely Kraglin washes.)

“Very well,” the doctor says. He gestures to the door with a long-suffering sigh. “You may proceed to Recreation.”

 

* * *

  

**Day 4**

Four days. That's how long it takes for him to try every new fad the institution has to offer. He's bored. He's spent the morning running through an unpopulated forest on the exercise simulation deck, and had snapped and snarled at everyone who claimed he was hogging the VR-goggles. As Gii had warned him, his jacket's been replaced with a dull grey shirt-and-tracksuit-bottom combo, no logos or insignia in sight. But he's got a scary enough countenance to ensure that no one complains twice.

Now, an hour after lunch, he's laying face down on his bed, full belly sinking him into the candy-cotton-soft mattress, and moaning monotonously as he contemplates three more days like this.

“You know,” says Gii, from the doorway. “You can always leave. It's not like they have guards.”

Kraglin lifts his head. Squints. “You serious?”

“Yeah.” She's sucking on a lollipop. There's sugar caught in the fuzz round her mouth, and her goofy incisors keep clicking on the hard candy. “This isn't a prison. Oh – sorry.” Kraglin waives it. “I'm not joking. If you want out, go tell the receptionist. Collect your things if you brought any, and go. If you don't have a lift, they'll arrange one. Simple as.”

Kraglin tips his head. “So there ain't no like, laser traps or nothin'? I thought they injected you with tracking tags.”

“You've been watching too many horror movies. Just say the word and you're out.” She winks at him. “I've done it enough times.”

And come back. But Kraglin ain't cruel enough to remind her of that. “Nah,” he grumbles, sinking to rest in the groove carved by his nose in the memory foam. “I promised a guy I'd stay. For a week, at least.”

“Who? Your, uh, partner?” He still hasn't gone into details, and doesn't plan to. Kraglin shakes his head, nose stirring the pillowcase.

“Nah. His son.”

“Ah.” Gii waits. When he doesn't elaborate, she decides not to pry. “Best wait it out then. I'll catch you at dinner.”

“Yeah.”

The door reels shut.

“You can totally bang her, if you wanna,” says not-Yondu, from where he's been sat on the edge of Kraglin's bed for the past day and a half. “If ya can get it to fit.”

The holopad stylus is the pointiest object Kraglin's allowed. He throws it at him without looking, and starts up his long low moan once more.

 

* * *

  

**Day 6**

Days 5 and 6 creep by like an inchworm. Each morning and night passes relatively quickly, as if Kraglin's cycling along a straight. But the middles of the days are the uphill stretch, when there's no routine of breakfast-fetching or undressing to fumble through (they've given him pyjamas, and the feel of clean fabric on his skin when he sleeps is such a novelty that Kraglin's decided they're coming with him when he goes). The hours slow to a creeping lag, a wave of viscous lava meeting a river of molasses.

“Kill me now,” he tells Gii and not-Yondu. Whichever of 'em will listen, really. Because sure, it'd taken him a week to connect with Yondu through the implant – if that's what he was doing, and not just justifying hallucinations. But he'd hoped Peter, knowing his side of the story, would take seventy two hours tops. Kraglin's not sure how much he can take of this. Still, at least there's only one day left on his count. One day, before he forces himself to accept that he was wrong. That Yondu really _is_ gone, and that he ain't coming back.

Kraglin doesn't know what he'll do, if he reaches tomorrow's Light's Out call without hearing from Peter. He suspects it'll be a holopad stylus rammed up the nostril until it tickles his frontal lobe, given there aren't even scissors in the craft room – he's checked. He could always walk out and wander the Xandarian streets until a cruiser-taxi is kind enough to mow him down. But Kraglin doubts he'll have the energy.

The hopelessness of his plight eats away at him. Of course he's crazy. Of course Yondu was never actually there, never actually real – the smirking blue imp perched on his bedpost proves that. If Kraglin's seeing him now, clear as day and without the fin, he really has gone fucking mental, and it'd be better for everyone – easier, really – if he found a way to end it. He doesn't even feel angry about it. Just... accepting. He's been struggling under this fear for so long that to have it confirmed is a relief, albeit one that sucks motivation and strength from him like a giant lamprey.

Gii says something classically snappy and spry in response to his request. Kraglin's ears don't bother to register it.

“I'm gonna nap,” he announces, to the galaxy at large. Once Gii's closed the door, he holds his arms out to not-Yondu. Might as well get some enjoyment out of his last day alive. Even if it's fake, even if _knowing_ that it's fake is no longer something he can ignore, Kraglin still wants that facsimile of closeness. The Yondu that coils on the sheet besides him may be a simulacra, something beyond the boundaries of reality. But he's all Kraglin has, and he clings to him.

Or rather, he tries to. Because whereas before, he's at the very least been able to touch Yondu, now his hands glide right through. There's no puff of glitter. No grumpy squawk, no flick of his nose. Of course, Not-Yondu performs those actions as soon as Kraglin thinks of them, glitter unincluded – but there's no pre-empting. No spontaneity. No spark of _life..._

And when the comm on Kraglin's bedside table pleeps, and the receptionist's voice informs him he has a visitor calling himself 'Starlord', Kraglin glances down and finds that he's not really there at all.

 

* * *

  

Peter looks... Well, sheepish is the wrong word. His cheeks are tinted with an embarrassed stain, and he slams the fin so hard into Kraglin's chest that he knocks him back a pace.

“Tell _your cap'n_ to wear some clothes.”

Kraglin's mouth works. Trembles. Forms around the beginnings of a grin. “I don't think he can.”

“And _I_ think he's wandering around starkers just to piss me off. Has he sat at the table like this?” Peter's face, expressive as ever, morphs through slow horror. “God, has he sat in the pilot's seat? Has my ass been where Yondu's bare, wrinkly, ghostly blue ass has been?”

“Not as far as I know,” Kraglin says. He's being honest about it too, because he'd been the one in the pilot's chair, and Yondu'd been the one squatting over his lap, all slicked hole and predator's eyes and static.

By the stars, Kraglin has never needed to see someone more.

His hair's growing in again, a fuzzy brown helmet. But if Peter can make the connection through his ginger curls, Kraglin ain't gonna let his own luscious locks stop him. He wedges the prosthetic in place, shuts his eyes, counts to ten, exhales until his lungs ache and _opens..._

“'Sup, a-hole. Betchu thought you'd seen the last of me.”

Yondu's lounged along the contertop. He's facing them in all his nude, glowing, scarred and slightly stout glory. As a result the receptionist is face-to-cheek with Kraglin's favorite part of his cap'n's anatomy. He's almost jealous. Only she can't see Yondu, and he can, so he wouldn't swap places with her for the world; and dammit, but he just wants to kiss his cap'n. Is that really too much to ask?

“Come here,” he whispers. The words are spoken as a plea, although they may be phrased as an order. Kraglin never gives those, not unless Yondu's in a _really_ fun mood. As always, Yondu can't help but tease him:

“Why don'tchu come here? Let an old man rest.”

“You're dead, boss. At _eternal_ rest, some might say.”

The receptionist's watching them oddly. Kraglin gulps, having visions of himself being hauled off to the padded cell of his nightmares – but Peter lays a comforting hand on his arm. “It's okay,” he tells her. “Either he's sane or my whole team have contracted a really nasty space flu – nope, don't worry, that's totally not an option; Rocket insisted we cover all the bases before we contacted you, just in case. We've already checked.” That last part is added when he notices Kraglin's eyes round in the way that usually precedes panic. “We're all convinced. Which, unfortunately for my poor teammates, meant we all had to try a stint with the fin, and got ourselves an eyeful.” He shudders. “Poor Mantis. I don't think she's ever going to recover.”

“Hm?” Kraglin perks up. “You mean you could all see him immediately?”

Peter shakes his head. “Took me three days. Took Rocket one, and Gamora and the rest between five and one minute. By the time Drax put on the fin, it was almost instantaneous.”

“Yep,” agrees Yondu, kicking a dropped pill pot as he jumps down from the desk. “I'm getting' better at this.” The pot skitters away from them, rolling to rest against the far wall. The receptionist peers at it over her glasses.

“He's getting better at this,” Kraglin says, repeating Yondu's words for Peter's benefit. He can see this becoming his new lot in life. And, he discovers as Yondu picks up the pot and juggles it hand to hand, grin as elated as a child's, he's looking forwards to it.

The receptionist levels a shaking finger. “Is that floating?”

Peter continues as if he doesn't hear her. “Which is why I'm certain you can make pants. Just some fucking underwear. A loincloth, for the love of the stars...” He angles his glower in all different directions until Kraglin points him in the right one. He catches Yondu's shoulders, both for an excuse to drag him against his side, and to keep him still. Yondu sniggers.

“How about a jockstrap?”

“He suggests a jockstrap,” Kraglin relays. Peter's face crumples most satisfyingly. “Or a thong.”

“Kraglin.” A small voice, from the doorway. Kraglin, one foot over the threshold, freezes.

Gii. Of course. Not everyone in this galaxy gets such an easy fix to their problems. This time his tongue doesn't trip over the words. Kraglin manages to say what he'd meant to three days ago:

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” He's fairly sure that gerbils can't cry. But if they could, she'd be about to, and that's the last thing either of them want. “I'm happy for you. Get out of here while you still can.” 

Kraglin tips her a nod. "I'll call ya." He ignores Yondu's squint. It's nice to have a friend again, especially one who's in no imminent danger of being tossed out an airlock by mutineers. He loops an arm around his captain's waist to steer him for the exit. Considering all the sex they've had since Yondu first materialized, going for a week without has put Kraglin into near-withdrawal. Now, with that firm blue body reassuringly solid under his hands, he can't resist.

He pinches Yondu's ass.

And leaves the hospital madder than he entered it: dodging smacks to his head by an invisible man, and laughing so hysterically he's afraid he might be sick. A trail of glitter footprints follows him, collecting in the creases on the white linoleum. But they'll be swept up before morning, and Kraglin's too busy trying to coax his snarling captain back into hugging distance to care.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So that was that! It's... shoddily edited compared to my earlier fic, because I was belting through it with without really thinking about where I was going. But I hope you enjoyed it, nevertheless! Imagine all the Shenanigans poltergeist-yondu and co. could get up to...**

**Author's Note:**

> **Comments are life!**


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